Google Hits Pause On Ask Photos AI Rollout

Google Hits Pause on Ask Photos AI Rollout

Google has temporarily halted the expansion of its innovative Ask Photos feature for Google Photos. This AI driven tool which had been gradually becoming available since last fall is currently under review. Jamie Aspinall a product manager for Google Photos candidly stated in an X post that Ask Photos is not where it needs to be. The primary concerns cited are issues with latency quality and the overall user experience.

Understanding Ask Photos and Its Technology

The experimental feature relies on what Google describes as its most capable Gemini AI models. Google further clarifies that it uses a specialized variant of these Gemini models exclusively designed for Ask Photos. Google initially unveiled Ask Photos last May during I O 2024. The company presented it as a tool for asking your Photos app common sense questions that might otherwise require human assistance. Examples include inquiring about past themes for a birthday party for a child or identifying visited national parks. In its announcement Google highlighted the multimodal capabilities of Gemini. These allow the AI to understand the content of each photo and even read text within images if necessary. Ask Photos is designed to then formulate a useful response and select relevant photos and videos.

Googles Plan for Improvement

Aspinall explained that the rollout was paused when it had reached only very small numbers of users. This allows the team to concentrate on resolving the identified problems. He anticipates that an improved version addressing these concerns and restoring the speed and recall of the original search capabilities will be ready in approximately two weeks.

Context of Previous AI Feature Challenges at Google

This is not an isolated incident for Google regarding pausing AI powered features. The company is actively competing in a rapidly escalating AI development race against other major tech firms and emerging startups. For instance last May Google paused its AI Overview feature in Google Search shortly after its debut. This occurred after instances of bizarre and incorrect answers gained widespread attention on social media. Users also lacked an option to disable the feature. Notable errors included AI Overview incorrectly stating Barack Obama was the first Muslim US president and advising users to add glue to pizza to prevent cheese from sliding off. Similarly last February Google introduced the image generation tool of Gemini with considerable excitement. However the company halted this feature within the same month following reports of historical inaccuracies. One such example was an AI generated image showing the US Founding Fathers as individuals of color.

Parallel Enhancements to Photo Search

Concurrently Google revealed on Tuesday enhancements to its standard keyword search in Google Photos. Users can now employ quotation marks for precise text matches in elements like filenames camera models captions or text found within images. Searching without quotes will continue to incorporate visual matches.